Jindal: School vouchers fight still on

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal said Tuesday that regardless of what the Department of Justice is claiming, his state is no closer to a resolution in a school voucher lawsuit that has appalled high-profile conservative school choice advocates.

The Justice Department sent a letter Tuesday to House Speaker John Boehner, saying the state has agreed to hand over information that the federal government has wanted for a while about the voucher program’s effect on the racial makeup of participating schools. That move might bring both parties closer to a resolution over the August suit, the letter said.

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“…Louisiana agreed to provide information on the voucher program that the department had originally requested in May 2013 and that the state had, up until now, largely withheld. This is thus a major step forward and puts the parties on a path to resolving the primary issue that motivated the department’s court filing in the first place,” the DOJ letter to Boehner reads. “We are pleased that Louisiana finally has agreed to provide the necessary information to the department. It is only regrettable that the department had to resort to court involvement in this case in order to obtain it.”

But Jindal blasted the DOJ’s letterbecause the central component of the lawsuit still stands: DOJ is still aiming to keep the program from granting vouchers next school year unless a federal court first approves parents’ decisions about where they want to send their children to school.

“The Obama Administration’s latest maneuver is nothing more than a PR stunt,” Jindal said in a statement. “While attempting to rebrand its legal challenge as merely an attempt to seek information about implementation of the scholarship program, the administration’s real motive still stands — forcing parents to go to federal court to seek approval for where they want to send their children to school.”

“The Obama Administration’s letter is disingenuous,” the statement continued. “The administration claims the state is suddenly providing information, when in reality, the information the federal government is seeking does not even exist yet. And they know it.”

But DOJ said it has struggled to obtain data from the state about how the program affects the racial makeup of participating schools. The department had to resort to court involvement to get data for this year and the 2012-2013 school year, the letter to Boehner notes. In August, the department filed suit against the state.

Jindal, term-limited as governor, has railed against the lawsuit since its inception. As a prospective presidential contender, the very public fight over the DOJ suit is sure to raise Jindal’s national profile. Jindal is capitalizing on the action: Ads in Louisiana criticizing Washington’s involvement in the state voucher program began airing Monday. Jindal’s political adviser Timmy Teepell told The Advocate newspaper that the governor spent $500,000 in campaign funds to air the television spot for several weeks.

“The federal government in Washington’s out of control; now they want to run our schools,” Jindal says in the ad. “The know-it-alls in Washington think they know better than Louisiana parents.”

The Obama administration has said that Louisiana’s school voucher program, which allows children to transfer out of failing public schools into private schools on the public’s dime, has hurt desegregation efforts in Louisiana. DOJ said the program has disrupted the racial balance of some of the participating schools. That claim has outraged Jindal and other conservative school choice supporters, including former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and House Republican leadership.

Before DOJ’s injunction can move forward, the U.S. District Court in New Orleans must consider two outstanding issues. First, the court must determine if a federal desegregation order applies to the voucher program. (DOJ oversees approximately 200 desegregation orders nationwide.)

Second, the court has compelled the state to provide an analysis of the program’s effect on any schools now under a federal desegregation order. Jindal has noted that Louisiana officials already collect most of the data DOJ requested.

The state must include data for this school year and have it ready by Nov. 7. A hearing is scheduled for Nov. 22. If the federal government doesn’t move forward with its injunction, DOJ requests that the state provide an analysis of the program’s effect on the racial makeup of schools each year it’s in operation.

The majority of the roughly 8,000 students statewide using the vouchers this school year are black.

Last week, Jindal resisted the ideathat both parties might come to a resolution and insisted that DOJ drop the lawsuit. On Sept. 17, Boehner and other House Republican leaders wrote Attorney General Eric Holder saying the lawsuit was “extremely troubling and paradoxical in nature.” Boehner asked how the lawsuit will allow low-income and minority children to better their education opportunities and he asked that DOJ respond to the letter by Oct. 1.

Bush, a major advocate of school choice, joined Jindal in his outrage and chalked up the DOJ’s letter to politics.

“This latest move by the Obama administration proves, yet again, that they are more interested in playing politics than worrying about quality education for all Louisiana children,” he said in a statement Tuesday. “Changing language does not change this administration’s pursuit of forcing parents to seek approval from Washington when deciding where to send their children to school. … Unless the administration drops this lawsuit in its entirety, Louisiana students will be denied equal opportunity.”

DOJ contends that the goal of the lawsuit isn’t to shut down Louisiana’s school voucher program. “When properly run, state and local voucher programs need not conflict with legal requirements to desegregate schools,” the letter to Boehner says.

But the suit cites examples in which it says desegregation efforts have been harmed by Louisiana’s program. For example, six black children left a school in the St. Martin Parish district, “thereby increasing the difference between the school’s black student percentage from the district’s and reinforcing the school’s racial identity as a white school in a predominantly black school district,” the petition reads.

Jindal has called these examples “absurd.” He also called on President Barack Obama to meet with Louisiana’s school choice students and parents and explain to them how the lawsuit will further their education opportunities.

“What they’re saying is, they think it would be better to force those six black kids in St. Martin’s Parish to go back to an F-rated school,” he said last week. “I’m not [a] lawyer, but to me that is legally, factually and morally absurd.”

The Justice Department’s challenge of the program isn’t the first. In May, the state Supreme Court ruled that the funding for the program was unconstitutional. The court said the state couldn’t use the money allotted for each public school student, so Jindal found $40 million in other public funds for the 2013-14 voucher students.